Barcoding News
Data tracking news, product updates, tips, and more
Plant Access Grows Its Competitive Edge with Honeywell RFID Solutions
Plant Access is a specialised logistics services provider, catering for the green life industry. Plant Access provides a highly efficient service utilising a unique, innovative steel stillage design used to pick, crossdock and deliver nursery plants to Bunnings Warehouse locations across Victoria and South Australia.
Weeding out manual processes
Plant Access manages the orders and provides the steel stillages that are used to transport plant products from over 67 nursery supplier sites to Bunnings stores across Victoria and South Australia. Shipments from different suppliers are consolidated at the Plant Access cross dock facility before orders are transported to Bunnings locations and plants are sold to consumers direct out of the steel stillages.
At any one time, Plant Access has thousands of re-usable steel stillages spread across hundreds of sites throughout the supply chain. Knowing the location of all these stillages and the status of an order was a serious challenge for Plant Access under a legacy paper-based manual ordering system.
A new automated tracking system was necessary to capture real-time data from nursery supplier sites, the Plant Access cross dock logistics facility and the Bunnings stores, in order for Plant Access to have an accurate and instant visibility of their stillage assets and the products they were transporting.
Infographic: The Wireless Challenge for the Hospitality Sector
Meeting guest’s needs and expectations are the core concern for any hospitality environment. With people being more mobile than ever, reliable and accessible wireless connectivity are not different than room service or room cleaning.
Zebra’s wide offering of wireless access points and controllers allow you to create a network that is designed to meet your specific needs no matter the size of your application. Keep customers happy while empowering your workforce with a wireless network that works for you.
Hermes Invests in Zebra Solutions to Improve Delivery Experience
Hermes, the consumer delivery specialist, has invested in state-of-the-art handheld scanners in what represents one of the largest mobile implementation projects in Europe. The company will equip its local courier network and myHermes ParcelShops with more than 20,000 TC75 mobile computers from Zebra, in a move designed to heighten the overall customer experience it provides on behalf of the UK’s leading retailers.
These new enterprise-grade handheld devices and the software which powers them will provide greater visibility during the delivery process as the company moves toward its goal of 100% first-time delivery success. The 4G TC75 devices have a 10-hour battery life, a built-in camera to capture high-quality photos and boast improved GPS functionality. This allows geo-fencing technology to provide pin-point accuracy for delivery, which means parcels are satellite-tracked to the customer’s doorstep.
Case Study Video: Copper Mountain Ski Resort Lifts Customer Experience with Superior Scanning from Honeywell
Copper Mountain is a premier ski resort based in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. With more than 2,500 acres of ski terrain and around 10,000 skiers entering the ski lifts each day, Copper Mountain relies heavily on quick and efficient scanning operations.
When tasked with finding a mobile device to use in their lift lines, they wanted only the best. They needed reliable and cost effective solutions for various solutions for not only their lift lines, but their retail and rental locations as well. Ultimately, they selected a solution from Honeywell.
Datalogic Discontinues the QuickScan QD2110 and QD2130
With the introduction of advanced technology in recent new QuickScan product launches, Datalogic has announced the obsolescence of their QuickScan QD2100 scanner series.
To replace this older model, Datalogic highly recommends migrating customers to the QuickScan QD2131 linear imagers. Datalogic will be able to deliver a better price performance product to meet customer needs with the newer QD2131 imager, just launched in September of last year.
The newer QuickScan QD2131 linear imager has improvements in the following features:
- Longer Depth of Field (DOF)
- Wider Field of View (FOV)
- Longer, sharper and brighter scan line
- Better look and feel (same as the QuickScan 2D QD2400)
- Shared peripherals (accessories) with the QuickScan 2D QD2400 product family
Zebra’s New ZD410 Ultra Compact Label Printer
If you need fast, dependable printing in the most space constrained areas, you need the ZD410. This ultra-compact “fits anywhere†printer is designed for the smallest of work spaces. When it comes to flexibility, the ZD410 shines — this printer creates high-quality labels, receipts, tags and wristbands. This super-fast printer keeps your workers productive. Deployment is a breeze with a wide range of modern connectivity options. The ZD410 is easy to use, operate and troubleshoot, ensuring your printer is always up and running. And Zebra OneCare service maximizes the availability and productivity of your ZD410 printers with unmatched from-the-manufacturer support that covers everything, from worn out printheads to normal wear and tear. The ZD410 is the little printer designed with big business functionality.
Key features
- A more space-saving design to fit in the tightest of spaces.
- Best-in-class print quality with a 300 dpi option for small labels, specimen containers and more.
- Disinfectant-ready plastic model is ideal for clinics, labs, pharmacies and nurse stations.
- More media flexibility with standard movable media sensor accommodates off-centre black marks, die-cut notches and more.
- Updated user interface makes it easier to use and troubleshoot.
- More connectivity options including 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.
- All with plug-and-play replacement of aging Zebra LP2824 Plus and competitive printers.
- Integrate, manage and maintain your printers from any location with Link-OS, only from Zebra
Night Time Modes: Ensuring Patient Comfort with the Honeywell Xenon 1902h
Adaptability is a necessity in healthcare. Every clinician has a wide variety of daily tasks and responsibilities to ensure quality patient care. As such, data collection tools need to be just as adaptable as their users. With the Xenon 1902h, such adaptability is not only possible, it is also easy to implement and change to support varied clinician workflows.
A typical standard scanner provides a loud, audible “beep” to indicate a “good read.” While this kind of operator feedback is widely understood, it can be highly disruptive in certain environments; say, during night time operations in an inpatient recovery ward. In these environments, maintaining patient comfort while keeping clinicians productive can be a challenge. That is why our Enhanced Xenon 1902h includes a quick-toggle mode we call Patient Do-Not-Disturb. In this mode, audible feedback is disabled and replaced by additional visual display options that provide positive status indication to the clinician—without disturbing resting patients. Select from multiple silent status indication options, including pulsing of the scanning aimer/imager and/or activation of the back-mounted status LEDs.
Create “One Store, One Experience” with Zebra Solutions
Zebra has unveiled new products and solutions that help retailers optimize profitability and increase employee productivity while improving the omnichannel shopping experience. Zebra is introducing two new desktop printers, ZD410 and ZD420, that connect via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to help employees update product pricing, shelf labels and coupons in alignment with the store’s merchandising and pricing strategies. Zebra’s new Price Management Execution solution synchronizes in-store and online pricing, allowing retailers to execute the right price at the right time, providing seamless and competitive prices to in-store shoppers. In addition, the recently announced lightweight, ergonomic TC8000 enterprise mobile computer can help increase the productivity of warehouse workers by an average of 14 percent based on workflow.
The Internet, online shopping and mobile communications have turned traditional retail customers into connected customers who seek consistency and want to deal with “one store” and have “one experience.” To keep shoppers satisfied and earn their loyalty, retailers need to provide consistent messaging, customer service, pricing and availability across every customer touch point – in-store, online and mobile.
Elo’s New 5501LT Interactive Digital Signage Display
Elo has unveiled a new 55-inch 5501LT modular interactive digital signage display, featuring 10-touch infrared capability to deliver a smooth and highly responsive multi-user interaction. The infrared touch technology provides higher touch sensitivity, giving the 5501LT a tablet-like performance on a large-format screen. The low-profile design integrates seamlessly into modern interiors for retail, office, hospitality or public space applications, and offers system integrators and value-added resellers a high-performance solution that is easy to deploy and will withstand the heavy use of a commercial setting. The 5501LT is available to order beginning today.
Retailers are turning to touchscreens to unite the online and in-store shopping experience and increase customer engagement, while businesses have used the technology to enhance collaboration in an office setting and increase productivity. The clear-glass 5501LT takes large-format touchscreens to the next level by including 10-touch infrared technology, auto-switching between active input sources to ease use in meeting rooms, and support for serial control input with the use of adapter cables. Additional features include a 1920×1080 full HD resolution display and a high-contrast/brightness LED-backlit LCD panel, delivering undistorted clarity, and a new video input that auto-detects the last good signal from the internal computer module or other external video sources.
TTL and True RS-232 Serial – What’s the Difference?
The differences between a TTL RS232 and a True RS232 interface purely have to do with data being sent, not with powering the barcode scanner. The data is being sent as an electrical block-signal representing a sequence of logical zero’s and ones.
- For a TTL device a zero would ideally be 0 volt, and a 1 one would ideally be 5 volt. The receiving device therefore has to decide whether a the signal at a given time is meant to be 0 or 5 volt, in order to tell if it is looking at a binary zero or a binary one.
- For a True RS232 device the zero is represented by ideally -12Volt and a one is represented by ideally + 12 Volt. Here the receiving device has it a bit easier because the difference between -12 and + 12 = 24 Volt. (specification allows -5 to -15V and +5 to +15V)
In practice we see that a signal gets weaker the longer it has to travel and can sometimes drop 1 volt a meter going via cable from device to host. With a True RS232 device both positive and negative signal can drop 10 volts and still have 4 volts difference in polarity left to tell zero’s from ones. The TTL interface has already less polarity difference if the signal drops just 2 volts.
